White People Wearing Headdresses

DC United game. Neither team even had a Native American mascot…

Lou Lou display in Dupont Circle, Washington DC - “Tribal Fever”

Plates printed with pictures of “Indian chiefs” at Catbird in Williamsburg

Store in the palisades mall in ny

Good Lifestyle recently came out with an article titled “Ethical Style: Should You Really Wear that ‘Ethnic’ Print?”

Among other trends, they highlight the URBN Navajo Panties!

n the fashion industry, appropriating ethnic cultures to stock mainstream closets has long beenen vogue. To sell new clothes, fashion has wrapped turbans around Edwardian heads, clasped Egyptian bracelets on flappers’ wrists, and swathed modern hipsters in American Apparel “Afrika” prints.The New York Times’Guy Trebay has called fashion“culture’s Godzilla, devouring everything in its path.”

This season, fashion’s cultural victims are biting back. In March, the Navajo Nationsuedretail giant Urban Outfitters over its line of flasks and hipster panties printed with a vaguely Native American pattern and stamped “Navajo.” When Rodarte released its Fall 2012 runway collection featuring intricate designs inspired by Aboriginal art and craft, a United Nations advocate for Aboriginal and Indigenous rightsdenounced the lineas “completely insensitive.”

What’s so wrong about taking inspiration from other cultural traditions? After all, fashion, like American culture generally, ought to be a multicultural melting pot. It’s not, though: The fashion industry is overwhelminglycontrolled by white people, from the models who walk the runways, the designers who clothe them, the fashion editors and writers who cover their every move, and the business people who market the trends to the masses. Given the background of the professionals running the show—and collecting the rewards—consumers should take a critical eye to cultural appropriation on the high-fashion runway and the fast fashion rack.

The case of the “Navajo” panties.
Mainstream America routinely appropriates Native American symbolism for a variety of inappropriate uses—sexy Halloween costumes, sports mascots,Ke$ha performances. Centuries ago, colonialists raped and murdered Native Americans, took their property, and introduced alcohol as a tool of oppression. Now, they just market boozy accessories and sexy panties in the service of hipster irony.

“Navajo” panties aren’t just generally insensitive—they’re also likely illegal. Since 1990, the Indian Arts and Crafts Act has prohibited the “misrepresentation in marketing of Indian arts and crafts products within the United States.” The act is meant to prevent non-Native manufacturers like Urban Outfitters from ripping off the traditional cultural products of Native peoples for its own profit. Faced with an alleged violation of the act, Urban Outfitters quietly changed the line’s name from “Navajo” to “printed.” (“Navajo” named goods still pop up in UO-owned Free People stores).

This is exciting because the more coverage, the better. The more websites, blogs, publications covering how this is fucked up, the better. I don’t read Good Lifestyle, but my readers do because several of you sent this to me - so thank you! And keep it coming, folks.

!!!!!

Fuck that

This video of young white people doing “Indian” chants on the F train in NYC is fucked up. Original clip and article here.

If you can’t read the copy, it begins: “You can almost hear the drum beats!” It continues: “All costumes included braided headbands…sizes 2/4 and 4/6 also include a feather.”

Johnny Depp, dreamboat extraordinaire and fantastic actor, is going to play Tonto in the Lone Ranger - and he has been sparking substantial controversy in how he is choosing to portray Tonto.

I have to apologize to the many people who have written requesting a post about this over the past weeks. I’ve been in finals and been lazy but also I have a deep and undying devotion to Johnny Depp and an awareness that Johnny identifies as part Native American. So I wanted to think it through.

Johnny took inspiration from this photo:

To create this costume:

As always, a Native Appropriations post says it best:

The Tonto costume is a mish-mash of stereotypical Indian garb, a Plains-style breastplate with a southwest-style headband (minus the effing bird), random feathers and beads—but the face paint that makes him look evil, forlorn, and angry all at once is a nice touch. Then, the fact that the publicity photo shows the “wild” and “unruly” (ok, I’ll say it, “savage”) Tonto behind the clean, polished, (and white) Lone Ranger is a great “honoring” to Native people too, and shows how much agency Tonto has, right? (/sarcasm) 

You guys, I’m pissed off. Like for real. I had a teensy-tiny bit of hope that this wouldn’t be another othering-stereotype-filled-horror, but clearly I was so wrong. This movie has a budget of like $215 million. That big of a budget, and you couldn’t have hired a Native consultant, or shoot—even asked  a Native person from the community you’re purporting to represent (Tonto’s Apache, right?) what the character should look like?

Yeah, I know this is *fiction* I know it’s not supposed to be *real*—but 99% of audiences aren’t able to separate images like this on the screen from real, live, Native peoples. History and every other stereotypical hollywood portrayal has taught us that.

Zunguzungu also has a great post about the problems with Johnny’s interpretation which you can find here.

Basically, I think it’s upsetting that a Native person was not hired or at least consulted in the portrayal of this role but if it was going to be Johnny I wish they would not portray Tonto in such a gruesome way. As the Native Appropriations excerpt notes, the clash between a “civilized” and aesthetically pleasing Lone Ranger and an unkept and wild-looking Tonto sends as many messages to viewers as words might and it’s fucked up. And destructive. 

This was probably taken down because of the drug paraphernalia but a girl can dream…

Target

Native Appropriations recently posted about “Tracing the Urban Outfitters Case and the role of Native social media” including an awesome visual - a Prezi presentation that shows how the URBN case played out. Seriously awesome!

Here’s the Prezi